Dr. Kristin Brethel-Haurwitz joined OBSSR as a Social & Behavioral Scientist Administrator in February 2021. In this role, she supports the OBSSR mission to enhance the impact of health-related behavioral and social sciences research, coordinate and integrate these sciences within the larger NIH research enterprise, and communicate health-related behavioral and social sciences research findings. Dr. Brethel-Haurwitz’s areas of focus are social processes and contexts that affect health-related behavior and outcomes, and relevant intersections with neuroscience. Dr. Brethel-Haurwitz is a cognitive neuroscientist and social psychologist, with expertise in empathy and social decision making and experimental research methods ranging from surveys and laboratory behavioral tasks to noninvasive human brain imaging and stimulation. Prior to OBSSR, Dr. Brethel-Haurwitz was an NIMH Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, studying the role of empathic processes in social decision making using behavioral and cognitive neuroscience methods including transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Dr. Brethel-Haurwitz earned a PhD in psychology with a concentration in lifespan cognitive neuroscience from Georgetown University, where she studied emotional processing in altruistic kidney donors using behavioral tasks and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
